Over the past several days, the anti-secrecy Web site WikiLeaks has been hit with a series of blows that have seemed to threaten its survival. Its primary Web address was deactivated, its PayPal account was frozen and its Internet server gave it the boot.
The result: WikiLeaks is now stronger than ever, at least as measured by its ability to publish online.
Blocked from using one Internet host, WikiLeaks simply jumped to another. Meanwhile, the number of"mirror" Web sites - effectively clones of WikiLeaks' main contents pages - grew from a few dozen last week to 200 by Sunday. By early Wednesday, the number of such sites surpassed 1,000.
At the same time, WikiLeaks' supporters have apparently gone on the offensive, staging retaliatory attacks against Internet companies that have cut ties to the group, as well as other perceived enemies. On Wednesday, hackers briefly shut down access to the Web site for MasterCard, which announced it had stopped processing donations to the group.
WikiLeaks' long-term survival depends on a number of unknowns, including the fate of its principal founder, Julian Assange, who is being held in Britain while awaiting possible extradition to Sweden related to sexual assault allegations. But the Web site's resilience in the face of repeated attacks has underscored a lesson already absorbed by more repressive governments that have tried to control the Internet: It is nearly impossible to do.
Experts, including some of the modern online world's chief architects, say the very design of the Web makes it difficult for WikiLeaks' opponents to shut it down for more than a few hours.
"The Internet is an extremely open system with very low barriers to access and use," said Vint Cerf, Google's vice president and the co-author of the TCP/IP system, the basic language of computer-to-computer communication over the Internet. "The ease of moving digital information around makes it very difficult to suppress, once it is accessible."
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